Francesco Sisci

Francesco Sisci is a Beijing-based Senior Research Associate at China Renmin University. His column “Sinograph” runs in Asia Times, and he is a frequent commentator on international affairs on China Central Television. He is also a contributor to the Italian Encyclopedia Treccani, and to the Italian Journal of Geopolitics, Limes.

In 1988, Sisci was the first foreigner ever admitted to the Graduate School of China’s Chinese Academy of Social Sciences (CASS). At CASS, his work in Chinese Classical Philology and Philosophy led to a thesis on “Rationalization of Thought and Political Discourse in Early Mohism” at the University of London, School of Oriental and African Studies. A journalist, from 1994-2000, Sisci contributed to ANSA, Asia Times, and Il sole 24Ore and Corriere della Sera, for which outlets he conducted exclusive interviews with top Chinese leaders such as President Jiang Zemin, Prime Minister Zhu Rongji, and State Councilor Dai Bingguo. Since 1999, Sisci has been a Senior Consultant for the Italian Ministry of Environment in China. He designed the framework and established the network of local contacts for the Italian-Sino Environmental Cooperation. In the period 2000-2003, Sisci wrote for Singapore’s Straits Times, and La Stampa. From 2003-2005, he was the the Chiara Fama Director of the Italian institute of Culture in China. Since 2004, Sisci has coordinated the exchange program between the Central Party School and Italy. The program was the first the Party School started overseas and it remains by far the largest run by China’s top ideological institution, headed by China’s Vice President. In 2006, Sisci was awarded an honorary Professorship by CASS in Classical Chinese Studies. From 2005-2010, he was Asia Editor for La Stampa, and from 2010 to 2013, he was a regular commentator for Il Sole 24ore.

Sisci is the author of the books La Differenza fra la Cina e il Mondo (1994), on China's reforms and the Tiananmen movement in the 1980s; La Piovra Gialla (1994), on Chinese organized crime; Another China (2001), on the structural changes in China and their global impact, serialized in Asia Times; Made in China (2005), on food, sex, women, money, family, and changes in Chinese Society; Chi ha Paura della Cina (2006); Ponte alle Grazie, on the West’s fear of China; Santa Sede - Cina (2008), with Father Francesco Strazzari, on the recent history of contact between the Vatican and China; Cina Tibet, Tibet Cina (2008), on the recent history of and cultural problems between China and Tibet; and A Brave New China, 2014.

Amidst a crackdown on Christianity in China, on September 22 the Vatican and Beijing provisionally reached a major agreement: Pope Francis will recognize seven excommunicated bishops Beijing appointed, in exchange for more influence on who Beijing...

On March 8, South Korea’s National Security Advisor announced that Donald Trump had agreed to meet with North Korean leader Kim Jong-un by May. Although now-ousted Secretary of State Rex Tillerson previously downplayed the announcement, a summit...

In a surprise Sunday move, Beijing announced that the Communist Party leadership wants to abolish the two-term limit for China’s president and vice president, potentially paving the way for China’s 64-year-old President Xi Jinping to stay in power...

On November 8 and 9, Communist Party Secretary Xi Jinping and Donald Trump held their first Beijing-based summit, a year after Trump’s surprise victory and just weeks after the predictable announcement Xi would serve a second term. During the visit...

When news this morning reached us that Nobel Peace Prize winner Liu Xiaobo had died, we invited all past contributors to the ChinaFile Conversation to reflect on his life and on his death. Liu died, still in state-custody, eight years into his 11-...

In a months-long barrage of mudslinging via Twitter and theatrical online videos, Chinese real estate billionaire Guo Wengui has alleged corruption at the highest levels in the Chinese Communist Party—some of which appear to be accurate, some as yet...

China’s President Xi Jinping called U.S. President Donald Trump on Monday morning urging American restraint in reaction to North Korea. Tensions between the United States and North Korea have risen to new levels ever since Pyongyang’s April 16...

On the evening of February 9, U.S. President Donald Trump had what the White House described in a&nbsp;terse readout&nbsp;as a “lengthy” and “cordial” telephone conversation with Chinese President Xi Jinping. That alone is newsworthy, as the...

There are few more consequential questions in world affairs than China’s uncertain future trajectory. Assumptions of a reformist China integrated into the international community have given way in recent years to serious concerns about the nation’s...

In the first quarter of 2016, Chinese debt rose to 237 percent of GDP—a level comparable to that of the U.S. or the Eurozone and yet much larger than that of most developing economies, according to analysis by The Financial Times. Additionally,...

A new law gives broad powers to China’s police in regulating and surveilling the activities of foreign NGOs in China. The law would require foreign groups including foundations, charities, advocacy organizations, and academic exchange programs to...

Fifty years ago this May 16, Chinese Communist Party leader Mao Zedong launched the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution, a chaotic, terrifying, and often deadly decade-long campaign to “purify” C.C.P. ideology and reassert his political dominance...